17.-18. February 2022, Helsinki

CALL FOR PAPERS

Infrastructure and (new) technologies unquestionably play a central role in (and for) development, as highlighted by the current sustainable development goals and revealed by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. The extractive development pathways putting liveable environments at risk are closely intertwined with infrastructural politics. Perhaps more than ever, the creation, maintenance, and distribution of infrastructures and technologies are crucial for virtually every aspect of development, including: the environment; health care; food supply; climate responses; education; trade; transportation and traffic; employment and work; economic stability and growth; information and communication; and, not least, social activities and well-being.

However, not only are access to and control over infrastructures and technologies drastically uneven; they also generate power inequalities and vulnerabilities in global development. With the notion of politics of vulnerability, we draw attention to power-ridden and complex socio-technical, gender, ethnic, and political-ecological relations. These relations shape the production of differentiated vulnerabilities to infrastructural, social, and environmental harms and adversities. It is urgent to think of and explore infrastructures critically because of their power to define futures by locking-in certain social, political, economic, and environmental relations while simultaneously locking-out other modes of relations for long periods of time. To avoid the looming socio-environmental catastrophe, we need to consider how the current infrastructural formations can be rearranged, retrofitted, or even decommissioned, as well as how to create future infrastructures that support and generate more just and sustainable futures.

In light of the urgent need to tackle climate change, inequality, and unsustainable forms of development, DD 2022 discusses the complex relations between infrastructures, technologies, and vulnerabilities in global development.

Keynote speakers:
Tania Li (University of Toronto)
Timothy Oakes (University of Colorado)
Nikhil Anand (University of Pennsylvania)

The conference is organized by the Finnish Society for Development Research in collaboration with the University of Helsinki, Hanken School of Economics and Finnish University Partnership for International Development – UniPID.

You are most welcome to join and contribute to critical scholarly debates on development-related research! Please, submit your abstract (typically 250 words) by 19 November 2021, directly to the chair(s) of the working group of your choice. The acceptance of abstracts is confirmed by 6 December 2021. More detailed information on the working groups is available here.